DOMA defense was doomed from Day 1 - Hey Boehner, I want my money back!

 $2.3 million on a losing defense. Way to go Boehner.

By a vote of 5-4, the Supreme Court declared the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) to be unconstitutional. They also dismissed the Prop 8 case, which means gays in California can resume getting married.

All in all, an awesome day for the lgbt community  It almost - but not quite - makes up for the ruling yesterday when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act.

But for my money, I want to focus on DOMA because the case was doomed from the start. Speaker of the House John Boehner gave $2.3 million to lawyer Paul Clement and Clement pretty much wasted it on a piss poor defense.  In 2011, both Americablog and this blog broke stories which pointed out the following serious problems with the DOMA defense:


1. Clement tried to sneak in the testimony of former NOM chair Maggie Gallagher in a way which would have kept her from being cross-examined.

2. A professor cited by Clement in a brief defending DOMA, Lisa Diamond, complained that her work was being distorted.

3. Clement is also citing - in a second hand fashion - junk science from discredited researchers. In his defense of DOMA, Clement cites the work of Case Western Reserve University law professor George W. Dent, Jr.

But Dent's work - which Clement uses -  cited both Paul Cameron and George Rekers, two discredited researchers. Cameron has been censured or rebuked by several organizations for his bad methodology in his studies. He has published work which claimed, among other nauseating false things, that gays stuff gerbils up their rectums. (Editor's note-  the piece Cameron cited to make this claim - The Straight Dope - actually said that this claim was not true. Cameron dishonestly "flipped the script" to make it seem that The Straight Dope was affirming this claim.)

Rekers lost a lot of credibility for last year's scandal when he was caught coming from a European vacation with a "rentboy."

Also, Dent cited the work of Walter Schumm's study Children of Homosexuals More Apt To Be Homosexuals? A Reply to Morrison and to Cameron Based on an Examination of Multiple Sources of Data.

Schumm's study was criticized for using the same false methodology as Cameron's work. i.e. citing sources "from general-audience books about LGBT parenting and families, most of which are available on Amazon.com"

Furthermore, Dent cited a book called Straight & Narrow by Thomas E. Schmidt to make criticisms about gay health. However, Schmidt is not a credible researcher in the field of gay health. He is a professor of New Testament Greek at Westmont College in Santa Barbara and according to Rev. Mel White of the group Soulforce, Schmidt cited Cameron's discredited studies many times in Straight & Narrow (5th letter to Jerry Falwell.)

And last, but not least, Dent cited the work of the American College of Pediatricians. The American College of Pediatricians is not a credible organization, but an organization created to give credibility to junk science about the gay community. Last year, over 14,000 school district superintendents in the country were sent a letter by ACP inviting them to peruse and use information from a new site, Facts About Youth. The site claimed to present "facts" supposedly not tainted by "political correctness."  Of course these were not facts, but ugly distortions about the gay community, including:

Some gay men sexualize human waste, including the medically dangerous practice of coprophilia, which means sexual contact with highly infectious fecal wastes

It all goes to prove that just like cologne on bad body odor, money can't cover up the smell of bull.